Deep Sea Mining

https://apnews.com/

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — The International Seabed Authority — the United Nations body that regulates the world’s ocean floor — is preparing to resume negotiations that could open the international seabed for mining, including for materials critical for the green energy transition.

Years long negotiations are reaching a critical point where the authority will soon need to begin accepting mining permit applications, adding to worries over the potential impacts on sparsely researched marine ecosystems and habitats of the deep sea.

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https://www.miningmagazine.com/

A battle raging between conservationists and miners which already spans from the desert-like plains of Nevada to the frozen tundra of the Sami in Scandinavia, has found a new flashpoint – a remote, expansive region of the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and Mexico.

Scientists from Britain’s Natural History Museum (NHM) said in May that as a result of compiling all the records from expeditions to the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ, which has been targeted for mineral exploration, they estimate over 5,000 yet-to-be-named species are thriving among the polymetallic nodules resting there.

The revelation has ignited a fresh wave of claims and counter-claims between conservationists striving to protect those newfound species and miners who say minerals from the ocean’s depths are essential for mankind’s shift away from fossil fuels.

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https://e360.yale.edu/

The U.N. body charged with regulating deep-ocean mining will soon consider whether to permit the first project to move forward. But ecologist Lisa Levin, who has long studied the deep sea, worries that in the rush for key minerals, a pristine and important ecosystem will be lost.

Few people know the deep ocean as intimately as Lisa Levin, an ecologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Not content with doing pure science, Levin, who has participated in more than 40 oceanographic expeditions, founded the Deep-Ocean Stewardship Initiative, a global network of more than 2,000 scientists, economists, and legal experts that seeks to advise policymakers on managing the ocean’s depths.

Of particular concern to Levin now is the prospect of deep-sea mining. The tiny island nation of Nauru has notified the International Seabed Authority on behalf of its Canadian partner, the Metals Company, of its intent to seek a permit to mine in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, a 1.7- million-square-mile region of the Pacific where polymetatallic nodules are scattered that have high concentrations of cobalt and other valuable minerals.

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https://apnews.com/

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Pressure is mounting on an obscure U.N. body based in Jamaica to hit pause on plans to potentially open the world’s deep seas to mining as companies push for permission to extract metals from seabeds in international waters.

The International Seabed Authority on Friday closed two weeks’ worth of negotiations without approving rules and regulations to oversee deep sea mining amid growing calls to pause, ban or place a moratorium on the quest to extract minerals from the Earth’s watery depths that are used in green technology like electric car batteries.

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https://www.realclearworld.com/

Tom LaTourrette is a senior physical scientist and interim director of the Community Health and Environmental Policy program at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation. The views expressed are the author’s own.

China dominates global supply chains for nearly all critical mineral resources. Especially important are elements such as nickel, cobalt, lithium, copper, and the rare earths that power decarbonization technologies such as batteries, electric motors, and turbines. The rapidly increasing demand for these minerals has rekindled interest in extracting polymetallic nodules from the deep seabed.

China controls the supply of these resources through extraction, either within its borders (especially in the case of rare earths) or through ownership of critical foreign mineral resources (for example, cobalt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo).

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https://www.voanews.com/

UNITED NATIONS — The prospect of large-scale mining to extract valuable minerals from the depths of the Pacific Ocean, once a distant vision, has grown more real, raising alarms among the oceans’ most fervent defenders.

“I think this is a real and imminent risk,” Emma Wilson of the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, an umbrella organization of environmental groups and scientific bodies, told AFP. “There are plenty of stakeholders that are flagging the significant environmental risks.”

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https://www.france24.com/en/

Park City (United States) (AFP) – He is best known as hunky, sea-dwelling superhero “Aquaman,” but actor Jason Momoa brought a stark and sober warning about the perils of deep-sea mining to the Sundance film festival on Friday.

The Hawaiian-born A-lister narrates “Deep Rising,” a new documentary about the frenzied efforts by resource-hungry corporations to scrape valuable metals from vast swathes of the Pacific floor.

Supporters of deep-sea mining claim that pellets of nickel and cobalt — used in electric car batteries — can be conveniently scooped off the seabed, helping reduce our fossil fuel reliance.

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